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America's small businesses are finding opportunities to streamline and grow

As a highlight of this month’s Small Business week in the U.S., the Department of Commerce has released a treasure trove of new data about all things small business, ranging from economic data, the characteristics of U.S. businesses and even an interactive tool called “Assessing Costs Everywhere” for evaluating the costs of conducting parts of a company’s business process or manufacturing in various parts of the U.S. or even the world. This information can be essential to the life or death of a growing young company.

The Commerce department provides its data through an interactive graphic, like this, from www.commerce.gov. I strongly suggest you take some time checking it out.

Meanwhile, in honor of the season, we decided to assess the health of our own Fishbowl customer base. As most of you are aware, we are the providers of Fishbowl Inventory Management software, which is used to fuel thousands of small businesses across the U.S. and the world, and portions of at least a few large ones such as NASA, Honda, United Airlines and the U.S. Army as well.

We think the nature of these companies is a harbinger of the nature of small business right now in the nation at large. So here are a few pertinent facts, gathered from the thousands we serve. Most Fishbowl businesses sell business-to-business, and many of them sell to big organizations (such as Wal-mart, etc.)

As you might guess, most of them are warehouses and manufacturing facilities in industrial parks. They are thriving – most are 5-10 years old. They are healthy – the average revenue is $3-8 million, and that average sum is progressively increasing. They are located in all 50 of the United States and 37 countries throughout the world.

While Fishbowl is headquartered in Utah, it might surprise readers to learn that the greatest concentration of Fishbowl-based companies is in California, weighing in at 17.4% of the sum. (A tribute to remote support capabilities.) They are loyal partners – as we like to believe that we are as well – the average customer has been with our software and company for three years, so far.

It’s fun to survey the landscape of these thousands of companies and to delight in the fact that while we’ve been growing ourselves, they’ve been growing right along with us. The power that small businesses have for each other, as partners, is huge. To see just how huge – and perhaps for a little entertainment and fun – here’s the full infographic below. What are you doing to grow and support your own small business? And how are you contributing to the success and health of all others? We welcome your comments and thoughts.